{"id":410345,"date":"2018-03-16T13:55:05","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T13:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=410345"},"modified":"2018-03-16T13:55:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T13:55:05","slug":"young-billionaire-pays-company-10000-kill-preserve-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=410345","title":{"rendered":"Young billionaire pays company $10,000 to kill him and preserve his brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Silicon Valley billionaire is paying $10,000 to be killed so that his brain can be preserved in the hope that it will one day be\u00a0uploaded to a computer\u00a0so he can live on digitally forever.<\/p>\n

Sam Altman, 32, a\u00a0tech entrepreneur, has paid to join a waiting list at Nectome \u2014 a start-up that promises to preserve your brain so it can – hopefully, one day – upload it into a computer to grant your consciousness eternal life.<\/p>\n

And the method, the company can confidently assure, is “100% fatal”.<\/p>\n

But Mr Altman, who co-created the Y Combinator program which funds start-up companies, told\u00a0MIT Technology Review\u00a0that he’s confident minds will be digitized in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

\u201cI assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And he is not alone. Twenty four other people have also paid to join a waiting list at Nectome.<\/p>\n

The company essentially proposes to embalm your brain – while you are still alive – with the intention of uploading it to a computer if or when technology permits, so that you can live digitally forever.<\/p>\n

Netcome’s chemical solution can preserve a body for hundreds or potentially thousands of years so one day scientists may scan your stored brain so it can be reborn as a computer simulation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But because the process requires ‘fresh brains’ the embalming chemicals need to be pumped into the client while they are still alive – effectively killing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide,\u201d Nectome\u2019s co-founder Robert McIntyre, a computer scientist, said.<\/p>\n

Nectome\u2019s storage service is not for sale yet and there is still no evidence that memories remain, or can be extricated from dead tissue.<\/p>\n

But the company already has a waiting list of future clients, ready to jump on the opportunity if or when the procedure becomes legal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And it may be available sooner than you may think. Medically assisted suicide is legal in five US states and Nectome has already secured a large federal grant for its research.<\/p>\n

It is collaborating with Edward Boyden, a top neuroscientist at MIT, and it has already preserved a pig\u2019s brain so well that every synapse inside it could be seen with an electron microscope – a scientific breakthrough that won it an $80,000 prize.<\/p>\n

Netcome said that the process would involve hooking up a living customer to a machine which would pump them full of Nectome\u2019s embalming chemicals.<\/p>\n

The company believes the process could particularly appeal to people with terminal illnesses.<\/p>\n

Other US-based companies already offer cryogenic freezing, which preserve bodies after death in liquid nitrogen in the hope that future advances in medicine and technology will allow them to be reborn.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: Mirro UK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Silicon Valley billionaire is paying $10,000 to be killed so that his brain can be preserved in the hope that it will one day be\u00a0uploaded to a computer\u00a0so he can live on digitally forever. Sam Altman, 32, a\u00a0tech entrepreneur, has paid to join a waiting list at Nectome \u2014 a start-up that promises to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":410353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[17586,17977,3297],"class_list":["post-410345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-odd","tag-mit","tag-sam-altman","tag-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/410353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}